Christopher Meyers is a philosophy professor at California State University, Bakersfield, and editor of "Journalism Ethics, A Philosophical Approach." Photo courtesy of Christopher Meyers

"Journalism Ethics, A Philosophical Approach," is published by Oxford University Press.

By Lisa Pinson
As traditional print and broadcast media evolve in the digital age, professional journalism is in the midst of radical transformation.
And determining what comes out the other end is why ethics is all the more vital, says Christopher Meyers, philosophy professor at California State University, Bakersfield.

To keep the discussion at the forefront, Meyers has compiled a new book, “Journalism Ethics, A Philosophical Approach.” The book is an edited collection of original essays written by leading scholars in journalism ethics, and is published by Oxford University Press.

Journalism has always interested Meyers, ever since he was editorial editor of the school paper at Redondo Union High School. He has spent much time putting theory into practice in Bakersfield newsrooms, including seven years observing the editorial board of The Bakersfield Californian.

“You can’t do practical ethics unless you know what the practice is. So you have to walk in the shoes of journalists,” Meyers said.

And Meyers continues to walk in those shoes. As vice president of the board of directors for Bakersfield Express, he helps guide the ethical direction of the nonprofit website as it enters uncharted territory as a donations-based news operation.

Meyers is also the executive director of the Kegley Institute of Ethics at CSUB.

What do you want journalists in training to gain from the book?

That they have to think really deeply and hard about some of these problems. There’s a tendency in journalism to reduce ethics to the law. Thus for example: privacy. California is very generous on privacy considerations. Anything that happens in a public square is, by definition, public. No matter whether the person to whom it’s happening has any control over what happened, or whether it’s information they would want to share with others … But because the law allows it, therefore, it must be OK. I also see in journalists the tendency to conflate trivial, titillating or sensational stories with the public’s right to know.

So journalists are given First Amendment protections, which I absolutely support, because of a genuine public right to know. I don’t think, however, the public has a right to know who Lindsey Lohan is dating this week. Thus for journalists to justify privacy invasions or other harms on such trivial grounds is to make a mockery of the Framers’ intent. I’m strongly opposed to a regulatory approach here, but I surely wish journalists would more fully embrace the ethical foundations of their craft – providing vital information for a democratic society – and give less attention to gossip and celebrity news. The gap between those foundations and actual practice needs to be much more carefully worked through for working and budding practitioners alike.

You tend to have a positive outlook on newspapers. In an age where the Internet has dominated many forms of media, why do you believe newspapers will prevail in the future?

I guess I am slightly less optimistic (now) than when I wrote those words. I’m optimistic that the kinds of journalism that newspapers have historically done will prevail. I’m even somewhat optimistic that there will be some newspapers doing that journalism.

The contributors of that section of the book, the general take they have, and this strikes me as plausible, will be some small number of regional papers: a New York Times, an L.A. Times, a Chicago Sun. And then there will be much smaller regional or locally focused papers, kind of like the movement The Bakersfield Californian has taken. It’s rare that The Californian has anything other than a local story on its front page. They have decided that the only way they can survive is to be of genuine interest to their local community. So they have become almost exclusively a local paper. It strikes me as plausible that this business model likely will prevail, but hopefully we will also be doing real journalism, good journalism both through these regional papers and online.

Much of the stuff that is online now is not good journalism. … I’m not hung out about questions of objectivity. I am concerned about justifying opinions. If you are going to do an opinion driven piece, you better dang well have your facts in line first. And you’ve better considered multiple perspectives – what good journalism demands, editorial as well as non-editorial. And so much of what is happening on the blogs qualifies that. If we lose that, then we lose the real purposes and functions historically of newspapers: to watch the powerful and to help us in those things that we have genuine need.

Your book showcases just how much responsibility journalists hold to the public. What might readers of unrelated fields find interesting about a journalist’s ethical duties?

Even if people aren’t journalists and aren’t thinking about being journalists, smart, well-read people care about how journalism is practiced and whether we will have something that will sustain those models. And they are more than happy to criticize bad journalism; sometimes very inappropriately criticize it because they think that this particular approach is obviously liberal or obviously conservative without realizing that they are bringing their own bias to the conversation. So, reading through these terrific contributions to the topic will help people to better understand what good journalism should be like. So if they are going to criticize, they would do so from an informed position.

Why do ethics in journalism interest you so much?

My area of specialization is theoretical and practical ethics. Most of my work actually is in clinical or medical ethics. I’ve always just been really struck by the way people think about ethical problems. In my mind, ethics is what distinguishes persons from non- persons. Probably the only true distinguishing feature that persons are able to worry about (is) how their behavior affects others and strives to create better relationships and a better role in those interactions. Non-persons, wherever we are going to draw the line in the animal kingdom, don’t worry about such stuff.

Journalists are fun, fascinating people. They are, by definition, curious. They’re well-read, self-critical, far more self-critical I think than any other profession. (They are) self-reflective. Good journalists are engaged with the kinds of things that I find interesting and they are just such interesting people typically. Thinking through how they think through ethical issues is part of what is so interesting and fun for me. Of course, going back to the earlier stuff, if we lose journalism, we lose a key foundation that makes for democracy.

How is the digital age changing ethics in media?

I don’t think it’s necessarily changing newspapers yet. It is certainly changing alternative forms of journalism: bloggers, investigative reporters and so forth because the opportunity for mistakes is even more profound there than it is on television. Typically (in television), there is going to be a layer of editing or filtering before it actually gets on the air. For online, particularly, if it’s for an individual, there’s no editor, there’s none of that careful review or filtering. So it’s much easier for false or stupid stuff to end up on someone’s blog online.

What we are starting to see with the more established journalistic processes is the kind of interactive feedback you can get online more easily. Jane Singer’s essay in the book is really good about this, talking about the network trust that online journalism will create. We have to be much more dependent upon one another to be getting it right and to be critical when we’re getting it wrong. Instead of information always going in this direction, it’s going in multiple directions. Information comes out but immediately information comes back. That requires really good journalists to be able to distinguish and use good judgment about what feedback is appropriate.

So I think there is great potential for network online journalism, but in the end, we still need good editors. (We need) people who have the experience and wisdom to be able to navigate among the crud.

On the whole, do you believe the media are ethical? What can they do to improve?

The first part of the question is really very hard. Within the internal norms of journalism, as journalists think among themselves about what counts as good journalism, overwhelmingly, reporters satisfy those norms. They very rarely plagiarize. They very rarely engage in the kinds of activities that the Society for Professional Journalists’ code of ethics frowns upon. The business of journalism, particularly in the past few years, (is) under a greater business threat. This has made it harder for fundamentally ethical journalism … providing necessary accurate information for its citizens, being sufficiently entertaining, (and) most importantly being a watchdog on powerful individuals and institutions. As they get more business pressure, it’s easier particularly in the latter case to not be as aggressive in that watchdog role.

If, let’s say a car dealership owner is somebody who is abusing their power, but you are desperately dependent on those car ads, 20 or 30 years ago, the editor would have told anybody who questioned that to go jump in the lake. Now the editor has to hesitate more, because if they lose that ad, then they no longer have a newspaper. So that basic fundamental purpose of journalism, I worry, is being damaged by bad business ethics.

And I also think I want journalists to think outside the journalistic box, like that earlier point about privacy. I regularly argue with my journalism friends. They think that if it takes place on a public street, therefore it’s public; there’s no question about privacy. But all kinds of horrible things happen to people in public, that they would not otherwise choose to share. Privacy is about control over the intimate details of our lives and it may be that it is a justified invasion of privacy. It depends on the case, but it still is an invasion of privacy to show someone that has been in a car wreck and the results, descriptions and photos of them are revealing information that they would consider intimate that they would choose to share only with friends, not with everyone that happens to pick up The Californian that day.